A company nowadays is looking for new ways to attract costumers or to promote their products. With the use of social media like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Friendster etc they can reach a greater public than ever imagined, with less costs for themselves.

After all, if one user does a re-tweet it has an exponential change to reach thousands of people, only with the power of a 140-character message, creating a micro business model.

This model has a few advantages compared to the “early days” like:

fewer costs

direct contact with your costumers

create a “we are here” feeling

However advertising alone won’t do the trick.

Promoted tweets, as they are called, are no silver bullet. Tweeting in such matter needs to be with a certain coordination and sustained, value-driven engagement so that the message will be amplified, otherwise it is bound to fail.

Also creating value-driven twitter adds is something corporate marketeers need to take upon themselves.
Advertisers need to sit down and think about how content is used, shared on Twitter and, importantly, what makes a Tweet successful.

But does Twitter advertisement really work ? It sure did for Dell.

In 2007 Dell launched the @DellOutlet account using it to sell refurbished systems. As of today it has more than 1.500.000 followers and sales where surpassed by $3 million. More than $2 million came from sales directly attributed to Twitter and another $1 million from people who start at Twitter and then move on to buy a new computer somewhere else on the Dell Web site.

But not only companies can profit from this piece of technology, people like you and me can do likewise . Take for example (starting) bands who give away free tickets, creating sympathy by the Twitter users.